National

Remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, IAM 38th Grand Lodge Convention, Ontario, Canada


Ontario, Canada–(ENEWSPF)–September 11, 2012.  

“Thank you, Tom [Buffenbarger], for your generous introduction. And thank you for inviting me to be a part of your convention. It’s an honor to be here.

You know, Tom, we don’t have enough labor leaders like you. Tough. Fair. Unapologetic. And in our world today, where far too many politicians find the idea of  working people standing together to be, frankly, distasteful, we need more people with your attitude.

In our world today, far too many elites think it’s somehow shameful to get your hands dirty for a living. We need more people who know that all work is honorable.

In this world today, some people say working people are greedy for wanting a decent life, jobless workers are blamed for being fired, homeless families are blamed for the foreclosure crisis, all while out-of-control corporations and millionaires and billionaires are applauded, thanked and appreciated for always wanting more, for not being satisfied with record profits and the lowest taxes since World War II.

And you know as well as I do that all this goes just as much for Canada, as it does for the United States!

Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, in today’s crazy world, we need more leaders willing to stand up and say, Enough! More leaders like Tom Buffenbarger.  We’ve got another leader here who I want to mention. Ken Georgetti. We need more leaders like you, President Georgetti, more tough leaders who will stand  strong for working people.

I’m honored to stand by you both.
I’m proud to call you my brothers.
You’re good friends and great leaders. And all of us have a better chance — we’re stronger because of the work you do. Thank you both. 

My friends, the Machinists are a tough and resourceful union — each and every one of you, right down to your core. I’m glad you do what you do. I’m glad you are what you are. And I salute you all.

You know, one thing I’ve learned in life is that when I’m trying to figure something out, when I’m trying to wade through a mess, I kind of back up and return to the  basics. What am I but a third-generation coal miner from a small town in Pennsylvania? I am the product of my upbringing. What you see is what you get. And my  town, Nemacolin, is probably like a lot of the towns where you live, or where you come from. It’s just another place that helps make up this great and prosperous land.

And I’m proud of my hometown. And, let me tell you, in that town I learned about respect and hard work. And fairness. 

My town had all kinds of people—but whether we agreed or disagreed, we looked each other in the eye. And I’ll never forget the lessons I learned from my mom  and dad, and from my friends and buddies down in the coal mines, about the importance of honesty and integrity and of looking out for each other. Of relying on  each other. I learned about life. And I learned about unionism.

Today, in America, far-right billionaires like the Koch Brothers and the leaders of the Republican Party, including the Republican candidates for president and vice  president of the United States, have decided to target people like you and me. 

They’ve targeted people like me, Mitt Romney has targeted people like us, with ads and slick mailers that make sly appeals to ugly emotions and social divisions.  Mitt Romney’s goal is to pit the American people against each other, so we won’t vote about what matters. So we won’t vote about the future of our country. So we  won’t notice that Mitt and his billionaire buddies have been making off like bandits while working people everywhere have shared the suffering of joblessness, financial insecurity and foreclosure.

I want to give you an example. When Mitt Romney in Michigan last month joked that he was born in Michigan, and so there was no mystery about his birthplace, he was reviving that old myth pushed by the far-right that President Barack Obama was not really born in the United States.

Romney played up the idea that—because of the color of his skin and because of his name—Barack Obama is somehow not American. Forget the fact that Obama was born in America. It’s a fact. It’s not open to dispute. Forget the fact that he has lived the American Dream, that he bettered himself by working hard and playing by the rules.

Those kinds of insinuations are ugly. And cheap. And we’ve seen too much of them.

I have no doubt that right now, at this moment, an advertisement is playing in the United States that says President Obama has gotten rid of the work requirement  for welfare.

That’s not true. Not even remotely. It’s an outright falsehood. But the Republican leadership is pushing that ad for the sole reason that it plays into the racist idea  that Obama, because he’s black, wants to give the wealth of white America to black people.

It’s worse than being not true. It’s a lie that plays to prejudice, to the worst instincts in our society.

And I’m sick of it. Democrats aren’t perfect. Far from it. Obama isn’t perfect. Who is in this world? But President Barack Obama is an honest president who’s doing a damn good job. The United States is better for the work he does, and that’s true every single day of the year.

I said this in the last campaign, and I’ll say it again. We’ve got a long list of good reasons to vote for President Barack Obama. But there’s only one really bad  reason to vote against him. And that’s because he’s black.

And let me tell you, sisters and brothers. The brand of political attack ads that bait voters with racial fears and animus tell us everything we need to know about Mitt Romney and the Republican leadership in the United States.

What Mitt Romney is doing is wrong. What the Republican leadership is doing is wrong. Those aren’t the values I grew up with. Those aren’t our values. And that  kind of politics is beneath the dignity of the United States of America. It’s beneath the dignity of every democracy in the world. It’s beneath the dignity of working people.

And there’s something we can do about it. We can all look back to those who raised us and the values that made us who we are.

And as we continue to campaign in the electoral season in the United States, and as we continue to build a movement for working people across Canada and around the globe, let’s each of us — every single one of us — keep our vision and our values in mind.

Sisters and brothers, what I’m talking about here are union values. I’m talking about the values of working people.

If Mitt Romney wins the U.S. presidency in November, he said, he’ll—quote—“turn around”—the United States. He’s the turn-around artist, he says.

Well, America doesn’t need that kind of turn-around. In his business career, Mitt Romney turned solid companies around by overloading them with debt, killing jobs  and ending pensions! That’s pretty much exactly what the Republican leadership has done to America. It’s what the big banks and so-called conservatives have  tried to do here in Canada. It’s the same game they’ve played in Europe. What else is the crisis in the Euro-zone but a debt-fueled excuse to cut the pay and living  standards of working people?

It’s time we all stood up and said, Enough!

It’s time—it’s long past time—that working people everywhere took back the political core in America and around the world.

We’re fighting that fight in the United States, and I know you’re doing it here in Canada.

And we’ll stand together with workers all around the world.

We will stand for each and every worker trying to make ends meet on poverty wages, for every parent who works a second or a third job to give her kids a better life, for every teacher who digs into his own pocket to buy the school supplies that children need to succeed.

We won’t rest until we reclaim our economies for the people who make it work—because we’re the ones who wake America up every single morning, and tuck her  into bed at night. We’re the ones who build the bridges and airplanes. We lay the pipe and drive the buses. We answer the call. We do whatever it takes, no matter what the cost. And we will take it back!

If you take one thing from my remarks today, I hope it’s this: Look past the distractions tossed at us by the right-wing to see the global labor movement, and then  act locally to lift up all working people.

Clearly, corporations have been thinking globally, and they’ve been exploiting us around the globe and from pole to pole.

The things we do have a direct impact on our brothers and sisters around the world. When we fail to stand up for our own rights here, workers somewhere else get hammered, too. And when workers far away, in India or China, are exploited, we’re exploited, too.

The idea that it’s good for America for someone somewhere to work for $1 an hour is a fallacy. As consumers, we’ve never seen any so-called benefit that outweighed the cost.

The trade agreements—both the ones you and I opposed and the ones coming down the line—are all designed to make our lives harsher and to allow corporations to exploit more people, to play us against each other. These trade agreements won’t enrich our countries, they’ll impoverish us.

So instead of so-called free trade, and instead of division and ugliness, I want to give you a summary of the Workers Bill of Rights that came out of the Workers Stand for America Rally in Philadelphia last month.  That rally was spearheaded by our own unions, and it calls for five fundamental rights for workers everywhere:

•           The right to full employment and a living wage,
•           The right to full participation in the electoral process,
•           The right to a voice at work,
•           The right to a quality public education,
•           And the right to a secure and healthy future.

Five sacred, fundamental rights that point toward shared prosperity and a bright future.

Brothers and sisters, the only way we gain the strength to make these rights real is through a movement built of real solidarity.

An honest-to-God working class movement, a movement for an economy that creates good jobs, a movement that honors the dignity of all workers and our fundamental freedoms every single day. The freedom to assemble, our freedom of speech, and our freedom to come together in unions to bargain for a better life.

A movement that honors each of us, no matter who our parents are, or where we’re from.

A movement inspired by the heroism we see every day in working men and women, and sustained by our shared belief in morality, and by our shared vision of a better world.

A world that offers opportunity to every person who wants a job—good jobs so people can raise a family if they want to and have a decent life.
We’ll work for it.  
We’ll stand for it.
Together.

To bring out the best in our countries. And in ourselves. To build the future we know we can have — we must have — for each of us, for our children, for our grandchildren. And we will never, ever, give up, or back up, or back down.”

Source: aflcio.org


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